Historic Home damaged by hurricane!! Part 2 !!!

On the day work began on the old Victorian, the owner comes out with several shopping bags, I'm wondering what can be in these bags; they looked real old. As he explained to me, shortly after the hurricane hit, he went outside and gathered as many pieces of the debris that he could. If you have ever done a puzzle, you would know the type of pieces I'm referring to. I explained to him that these pieces simply wouldn't help. He said, "How do you plan on reproducing all the fancy scroll work that was mounted on top of the massive cable ends of this home?" This was an excellent question, seeing that these bags he had saved all these years seem to contain the only evidence of what the scroll work looked like.

However, age and time had left a silhouette on the large boards that this fancy work was mounted to. I used large sheets of clear plastic and push pins to hold the plastic onto the backing surface, which enabled me to trace an exact copy of what once was. I then cut the tracing out, making a stencil, which was later used to reproduce the scroll design. This was then mounted on the backing board, and Bingo, we had the old look back!!

Needless to say, the owner was quite happy, so he called the local newspaper. They came out and took pictures, and posted an article about this Historic Landmark. I hope to post that article, and pictures which I think will clearly show exactly what I'm referring to, as to the details of restoration.

This part of the project was just one segment of the challenges that awaited the home's restoration. Next, we needed to deal with structural issues, as the two stacked, open porches had severely gone out from their once level positions, and had sunk and racked out of alignment. How would we get them back in order, without causing further damage? More importantly... without them coming down to the ground in the process. To Be Continued!!